The South`s Pioneer Newsprint Manufacturer

East Texas Historical Journal
Volume 40 | Issue 2
Article 9
10-2002
Southland Papermills, INC: The South's Pioneer
Newsprint Manufacturer
Bob Bowman
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40: Iss. 2, Article 9.
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16
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
SOUTHLAND PAPER MILLS, INC.:
THE SOUTH'S PIONEER NEWSPRINT MANUFACTURER
by Bob Bowman
During the weekend of January 20-21, 1940, Lufkin's coldest weather in
a decade slammed the community with blasts of icy air, a five-inch snowfall,
and bone-chilling temperatures. People trudged through the snow to reach the
town's downtown drug stores to buy cameras and film, anxious to record the
rare winter scenery.
The Lufkin Daily News' edition on Tuesday, January 23, took note of the
weather with a front-page, eight-column headline of the bold-and-black type
usually reserved for wars and disasters: "MERCURY PLUNGES TO 10
HERE."
Below the headline, four photographs and a smaller, one-column headline
recorded another event that occurred that morning in the Daily News pressroom. The story reported: "This issue of The News is printed on Roll No.1
from the Southland Paper Mills, Inc., Lufkin. The paper you hold in your hand
is off the first run of commercially produced southern pine newsprint in the
world."
While the roll of newsprint was the first to be used in printing a complete
daily newspaper in Texas, the first paper supposedly produced at the Southland mill came off the mill's paper machine in the early morning hours of
Wednesday. January 17. The paper had some defects and Southland's managers waited a week before delivering what they felt was "printable
newsprint" to the Lufkin Daily News.
The 1,445-pound roll of white paper trucked to the Lufkin newspaper in
late January, 1940, carrying a label stamped "No.1," was symbolic of the
enormous changes that subsequently occurred in America's newsprint and
newspaper industries, the economy of East Texas, and Lufkin's own industrial
economy. It was the first time newsprint - the basic commodity of all
newspapers - had been made commercially from the southern pine trees that
have existed for centuries in the southern United States. It was the first time
paper of any kind had been produced in an interior East Texas community. It
was the first time the interior of East Texas had a significant market for pine
pulpwood, or "cordwood," as loggers called the wood. And for Ernest Kurth,
the beaming barrel-chested lumbennan shown holding a freshly-printed
newspaper in one of the front-page photographs, it was the culmination of a
challenge that had consumed him for more than a decade.
Kurth was the second oldest son of Joseph Hubert Kurth, a distinguished,
spade-bearded German who arrived in Angelina County in 1888, purchased a
small sawmill from Charles Louis Kelty and James A. Ewing, and planted the
roots that would in forty years sprout a far-reaching lumbering empire in East
Texas.
Bob Bowman is a past pn.~sident of the East Texm Historical Association.
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOC1ATI0N
17
As he began to age, Kurth turned to his son, Ernest Lynn, a plano-playing
sawmill manager with a keen intellect and good business mind. Ernest
gradually assumed the helm of a lumbering complex that at its peak included
dozens of sawmills, almost 100,000 acres of timberland, and a collection of
other businesses ranging from hotels to insurance companies.
Kurth and his father had made considerable fortunes for those who had
invested with them. From Angehna County, Kurth-led businesses spread
throughout East Texas and western Louisiana. But by the late 19208, Kurth
knew the lumber business was changing in a significant way and was
considering the construction of a paper mill.
The great timber boom of the late 1800s and early 1900s had left much
of East Texas with forests cut over by gypsy lumbermen. Capitalizing on
cheap timber and a demand for lumber in places such as Houston and Dallas,
the gypsy loggers cut broad swaths through East Texas' virgin forests, left
behind millions of stumps and dozens of abandoned sawmills, and moved on
to other timbered states.
Eventually modem forest management developed as a result of farsighted timbermen such as those in the Kurth, Temple, and Kirby famllies,
who hired professional foresters responsible for changing the way the forests
were harvested and regrown. The Kurths and other lumbering families
acquired thousands of acres of cutover lands and replanted them with young
pines or encouraged natural regeneration, but they would not be lumber-sized
for another two to three decades.
To grow properly, the young forests needed periodic thinnings. The
thinnings were the right size for use as pulpwood in paper mills, but there were
no such mills in interior East Texas.
Paper mills in the South were also few and far between before the 1930s.
By 1920, there were only six kraft mills in the South. Eight more were added
in the 19208. After long sales pitches to northern banks, the money began
moving south in the 1930s and soon mills developed from Virginia to Texas.
Fifteen kraft mills were completed in the 1930s.
Texas had a few paper manufacturing operations on the fringes of its
timber belt in the 1930s. A mill at Oak Cliff made paper from used paper and
some wood fiber. Another mill in Orange made paper from southern pine
residues. But neither bought sufficient amounts of timber in the heart of East
Texas.
By the 1930s Kurth was a promising and aggressive lumberman in his
late forties, as well as a commanding figure in the industry and within Texas'
business and political circles. Despite the gloom of the Great Depression,
Kurth began promoting the construction of a paper-manufacturing complex in
interior East Texas. At first, he felt the production of kraft paper - a heavy
brown paper used principally for paper bags~ wrapping and packaging - held
the greatest promise for East Texas. Blessed with abundant timber and cheap
labor~ the Southern United States had become attractive to kraft manufac-
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EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOC rATION
turers. East Texas, Kurth reasoned, had the same potential, plus promising
markets in Texas' expanding cities.
Aware that there was little, if any, newsprint production in the South to
compete with Canadian newsprint made from spruce, balsam, and hemlock
trees, Kurth flirted with the idea of building a newsprint mill to serve
newspaper publishers in the South and Southwest. Jack C. McDennott and
C.S. Boyles, Jr., publishers of Kurth's hometown newspaper, the Lufkin Daily
News, made him aware of the problems and costs incurred in importing
newsprint from Canadian and Scandinavian manufacturers.
Because of increased demands for newsprint during and after World War
I, newsprint production increased from 800,000 tons in 1920 to 4,000,000 tons
in 1930. But most of the expansion was in the Canadian industry. Because
American paper manufacturers could not obtain wood from the Crown lands
of Canada, they had constructed paper mills in Canada. As a result, Canada
provided two-thirds of the newsprint tonnage consumed in the United States
by 1930.
In 1934, a ton of newsprint cost $40 in New York and Canadian suppliers
took full advantage of their near-monopoly. Southern newspapers seized every
opportunity to criticize the Canadian manufacturers openly; they contended
that the Canadians had allowed a shortage to develop, caused by rising prices.
They saw themselves as being penalized by a shortsighted policy on the part
of Canadian producers.
Southern publishers were especially hard hit hy the rising cost of
Canadian newsprint. Their greater distance from the Canadian mills made it
necessary for them to pay several dollars a ton more in freight than did
publishers in the Northern U.S. Some of the paper from western Canada had
to be shipped by a long and circuitous route through the Panama Canal to ports
on the Gulf of Mexico, where it was transferred to freight cars for inland
deliveries.
Canadian newsprint manufacturers and New York brokers tried to dis~
courage the development of Southern mills. Southern pine, they said, contained too much pitch and resin to be converted into newsprint. Even if the
paper could be made from pine, they argued that it would not be satisfactory
for modem, high-speed presses.
If the United States was to free itself from Canadian dominance in
newsprint production, American paper producers knew they would have to
find supplies of cheap wood in the states as well as suitable mill locations.
With its rapidly growing forests, cheap labor, low-cost transportation, and
ideal mill sites, the South was a logical place for paper mills.
Kurth, like other American newspaper publishers and paper manufacturers, was discouraged by conversations with paper company executives and
scientists who believed southern pine wood fiber contained excessive amounts
of pine pitch that would gum up paper machines and discolor the newsprint,
making it unusable for newspapers.
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
19
In 1927, Sidney D. Wells and John D. Rue of the United States Forest
Products Laboratory conducted a series of experiments in pulping four
varieties of southern pines (loblolly, slash, longleaf, and shortleaf) by four
separate pulping processes (soda, sulfite, sulfate, and mechanical). The work
indicated that pines would not make newsprint acceptable to newspaper
publishers because of their pitch.
When Kurth began to consider building a paper mill, there were no
production-integrated paper mills in East Texas and few throughout the state.
In March 1863, the Ninth Texas Legislature chartered the Texa~ Paper
Manufacturing Company to produce paper in an attempt to relieve the acute
shortages of newsprint and writing papers during the Civil War. Although the
company was incorporated and sold stock, it apparently was soon terminated.
Other attempts were made over the next several decades to produce paper
from rags, cornhusks, hemp, cotton and cotton linters, Spanish broom, silkweed, flax, cane bagasse, rice straw and any other fibrous material that was
available.
Several efforts to establish paper manufacturing facilities were made in
Texas around 1900, including a mill near Houston using baga~se, a byproduct
of sugar cane production, and a mill in Orange that made limited quantities of
paper from yellow pine. Neither mill was successful. A small Dallas mill made
paper from wheat straw, but the founders' inexperience defeated their dreams,
John G. Fleming of Philadelphia took over the mill and put it on a productive
basis. The mill prospered and its output grew from about eight tons a week to
more than 1,000 tons a week by 1943. The mill chiefly produced cardboard,
egg cartons, wallpaper, and a variety of building-grade papers.
In 1902 a small Pensacola, Florida, paper mill was moved to Orange,
where it became the Yellow Pine Paper Min. After several experiments, Edward
H. Mayo developed a method of making a strong wrapping paper, used to make
bags, from pine fiber in 1911. It was the first chemical pulp mill that used
southern pine, and marked the first large-scale effort at papennaking in Texas.
The first proposal for a Southern newsprint mill, based on the experimental work by Dr. Charles H. Herty at his Savannah, Georgia, laboratory,
emerged in 1934. That year, Major George Berry, president of the Printing
Pressmen and Assistant's Union and an official of the National Recovery
Administration, outlined a proposal for a mill in the South, a plan endorsed by
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to supply the needs of southern newspapers.
In 1936, at a chermurgic conference in Detroit, Michigan, Wirt Davis, a
Dallas banker, and Victor Shoffelmayer, the agriculture editor of the Dallas
Morning News, were honored for their efforts to promote more commercial
use of East Texas pine, for newsprint in particular. Also in 1936, Champion
Paper and Fiber Company began con&tnIction on a pulp mill in Pasadena. Pulp
from the bleached-sulfate pulp mill was shipped to Ohio, where it was
manufactured into fine printing papers. The mill later began manufacturing
paper at the site in 1940.
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EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOClATION
Ernest Kurth was already worth well over a million dollars. More than
any other man, he had made Angelina County one of the most industrialized
counties in Texas. By 1936, he was restless for a new challenge. As Kurth
pondered the possibilities of a paper mill in East Texas, the most significant
step he took came in March 1936 when he traveled from Keltys to Beaumont
to attend a Chamber of Commerce meeting in which business leaders,
,;cientists, and agriculturists explored ways to use Texas' resources to
overcome the Depression. Kurth talked with one of the speakers, an aging but
crusading Georgia scientist named Charles Holmes Herty, who described his
theory in which the onerous pitch problem could be resolved and newsprint
made from southern pine fiber.
Fired by Herty's enthusiasm and ideas, Kurth returned to Keltys convinced that there was a way to build and operate a newsprint mill in East
Texas. His conviction forever changed the economy, the paper industry, and
the newspaper business of Texas and the South.
The son of a pharmacist and Civil War soldier, Herty was born in 1867 at
Milledgeville, Georgia. When his father died in 1878, following the death of his
wife two years earlier, eleven-year-old Charles and his nine-year-old sister
became the wards of their grandmother, Frances Lawler Hetty. Herty attended
Milledgeville's public schools and the Middle Georgia Military and Agricultural
College, where he was graduated in 1884. He then spent two years studying
chemistry at the University of Georgia. With the chemistry classes overcrowded,
Herty was graduated from the university with a bachelor of philosophy degree.
At the urging of his hometown pastor, he decided to continue his education at
John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. On his application, Hetty said
that he wanted to become a teacher, but he was becoming increasingly intrigued
by research. He changed his study fields and completed his Ph.D. in 1890.
Tn 1891, the University of Georgia hired Herty as an instructor of chemistry, allowing him to focus on research and the publication of several scholarly
articles which attracted attention from chemists as far away as California and
the Netherlands. Herty spent a sabbatical year in Germany and Switzerland,
furthering his training as a chemist. In one of the papers he wrote in Europe,
Herty noted that industrialists had used the sulfite process to make paper in
parts of Germany where. the "tannenbaume" flourished. Perhaps, he speculated, southern pine fiber could be used for a paper industry in Georgia.
When he returned to Georgia, Herty was convinced that the South's
existing industries could be improved and expanded to improve the economy.
His belief blossomed into a crusade. Tn 1915, when he was elected president
of the American Chemical Society, he continued to raise the possibility of
making paper from southern pines and indicated the need for laboratory work
on the problem of controlling pitch. By late in 1928 Herty, who had reached
the peak of his prominence as a scientist and innovative thinker, began
working for the Savannah Industrial Committee. He concluded that timberland
owners, if they wanted a perpetual income from their properties, needed a
profit-making use for the thinned young pines.
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
21
As he traveled around the South, Herty was moved by the plight of
farmers whose lands lay idle from the Depression. Young pines were growing
naturally a~ a result of seeds blown from older, adjacent pines. "The development of a white-paper industry in the South could mean the salvation of many
farm families," he said.
In 1930, aware of the widely-held belief that southern pine contained too
much resin to make newsprint, Herty began his own research. He found a resin
content of about 1.38 percent, nearly the same as spruce. Enthusiastic and
excited, he persuaded a paper mill in Pennsylvania to make a small-scale
sulfite cook of slash pine. The pulp was bleached easily to newsprint
whiteness, adding support for Herty's. beliefs. HeTty next arranged to have
groundwood pulp made from young slash pine at a paper mill in South
Carolina. Again Herty's experiment was a success and refuted the old
contention that pine had a yellow color which would affect paper quality.
Supported by Herty and his Georgia friends, the pulp and paper industry,
and Francis P. Garvan's family-operated Chemical Foundation in New York,
in 1931 the Georgia Legislature approved legislation providing $2 million for
the establishment of a laboratory in Savannah to conduct research on wood
pulp and cellulose under Herty's direction.
The most important experiment conducted by Herty and his staff took
place in the winter of 1933, not in his laboratory, but in a Canadian paper mill.
Herty's Savannah crew prepared a batch of twenty~five tons of air-dried loblolly pine pulp, containing one-fourth sulfite pulp and three-fourths groundwood pulp, and shipped it to Beaver Wood Fiber Company of Thorold,
Canada. Herty felt the southern pine pulp should be tried on a fast commercial
paper machine before it would be acceptable to the paper industry.
On November 1, 1933, after scrubbing every trace of spruce pulp from a
paper machine and loading it with a mix of southern pine sulfite pulp and
groundwood pulp, the Thorold crew prepared the crucial test. The milky pulp
traveled over the paper machine's fast-moving forming wire at the machine's
"wet end" and soon a 155-inch- wide sheet began traveling through the
machine's steam-heated drying rolls.
Unable to stay still, Herty followed the sheet as it made its progress
through the machine. "My heart almost stood still," he said as he watched the
acid test of years of work.
Finally, the tlrst sheet of southern pine newsprint emerged pure and
white, moved from one roll to another, and finally wound on the reel at the
"dry end" of the block-long paper machine. Thorold plant manager John Ball
examined a plece of newsprint torn from the reel and remarked, "We're going
to lick it, Doctor." Herty asked that Ball give him the scrap of paper, on which
he wrote Ball's words.
Near midnight Herty was told that the Savannah pulp was almost gone.
At t :45 a.m., the last bit of paper came over the reel and Herty grabbed it for
a souvenir. He wrote on the paper two other comments by plant superintendent
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EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCTATTON
Henry Zieman: "Not a break in a carload" and "No sign of pitch anywhere."
The paper was shipped to Georgia and distributed to nine daily newspapers in
Georgia, who ran simultaneous editions using the Thorold paper on November
30, 1933.
Other Southern newspaper publishers began rallying to the Southern
newsprint project. James Stalhman, publisher of the Nashville Banner, was
named chairman of a Southern Newspaper Publishers Association (SNPA)
committee to explore newsprint production in the South. The committee was
organized on June 25, 1934, at Hefty's Savarmah laboratory and hired an
engineering consultant.
Herty traveled to Dallas on May 23, 1935, to address 250 East Texas
leaders about the opportunities presented by chemistry. He wrote that the
audience was interested in "hooking up chemistry and agriculture, and the
possibilities of papermaking" in East Texas. The meeting was arranged by
Victor Schofflemayer, who had written a series of articles describing extensi ve
acreage of low-cost pulpwood in East Texas. The articles quoted Ernest Kurth,
who contended that East Texas was ripe for a pulp-and-paper mill that could
use the younger trees as pulpwood.
Two pivotal meetings in the spring of 1936 helped Kurth enormously.
On April 28, he met Louis Calder, president and principal stockholder in
Perkins-Goodwin Company, In New York City. Calder, whose company sold
newsprint to newspapers, also had a Southern newsprint min on his mind and
had met Dr. Charles Herty and Francis P. Garvan.
In March, Kurth was present when Dr. Hefty spoke to more than a
hundred business, economic, and agricultural leaders in Beaumont, Texas, at a
chermurgic conference sponsored by East Texas Chamber of Commerce.
While it may not have been their first encounter, it was likely the first time
Kurth had heard Herty's newsprint speech in depth.
Hearing Herty in Beaumont altered Kurth's plans for a kraft mill.
Conferring with Calder, he learned that the trend of newsprint prices over a
period of years would likely be upward while kraft paper prices would
probably fall. In subsequent visits with Kurth and Calder at the Savannah
laboratory, Herty complained that he had been unable to find "anyone hold
enough" to try building a newsprint mill in the South.
Throughout the remainder of 1936 Kurth met with other tirnbermen in
East Texas, his new-found friend Louis Calder, and a number of banker and
financial advisors, and discussed the mechanics of newsprint production with
Herty and his Savannah laboratory associates. He also met and discussed
Southern papennaking with Francis Garvan.
On January 22, ]937, Herty was invited back to Texas, this time to talk
to a Dallas gathering of newspaper publishers, bankers, financiers, and
lumbermen, including Kurth and his associates from East Texas. The meeting
was arranged by E.M. (Ted) Dealey of the Dallas Morning News. Based on
commitments for newsprint tonnage by the S.N.P.A. publishers, the group
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAl, ASSOCIATION
23
agreed to move forward with a mill in Texas. As he left the Dallas meeting on
January 22, 1937, Herty said: "1 have been in a log jam for several years, but
it has now been broken by the actions of you Texans. I am a very happy man
over the result of our deliberations."
Herty was apparently hack in Dallas on March 25, 1937, when a limited
number of copies of the Oak Cliff edition of the Dallas Journal was printed
on a roll of newsprint from Herty's laboratory. Although the paper was only an
experimental sample, it was apparently the first time any southern pine
newsprint had been used by a Texas newspaper.
Meanwhile, through his association with R.W. Wortham, Jr., a friend
from Paris, Texas, Kurth met Albert Newcombe, a director of Perkins-Goodwin Company. Newcombe became a key negotiator between Calder, Kurth,
the South's newspaper publishers, and paper industry officials because of his
vast knowledge about papermaking. Newcombe and Kurth had similar personalities - determined, progressive, and visionary. They became good friends.
On January 2R, 1937, at the suggestion of Calder, Kurth and E.M. (Ted)
Dealey of the Dallas Morning News invited many of the interested principals
to a meeting at Republic National Bank in Dallas. They included Wirt Davis,
chainnan of Republic National Bank of Dallas; Nathan Adams, president of
First National Bank, also of Dallas; Arthur Temple, Sr., president of Southern
Pine Lumber Company of Texarkana and Diboll; P. B. Doty, president of the
First National Bank of Beaumont; Hubert M. Harrison, general manager of the
East Texas Chamber of Commerce, Longview; L.B. Denning, president of
Lone Star Gas Company, Dallas; Gus Blankenship, president of the First
National Bank of Jacksonville; Gus F. Taylor, president of Citizens National
Bank of Tyler; Guy Blount, a lumberman from Nacogdoches; P. B. Renfro, the
mayor of Beaumont; Worth Whited of Frost-Whited Lumber Company of
Nacogdoches; W.H. Francls, general counsel of Magnolia Petroleum
Company of Dallas; Tucker Royall, chairman of the First Natlonal Bank of
Dallas; W.W. Buffum, treasurer of the Chemical Foundation, New York; and
Newcombe and Wortham.
Following Kurth's discussions of the proposed mill, those attending
created an organizational committee consisting of Davis, Adams, Kurth,
Temple, and Repubhc National Bank executive Fred Florence to work with the
Chemical Foundation and Perkins-Goodwln Company to decide on an
organization and explore financial options.
George F. Hardy, the paper industry's premier engineer, was asked to
investigate possible sites for the mill. He surveyed a number of locations
within the timbered region of East Texas, including Hemphill, Jefferson,
Liberty, Livingston, Newton, Tatum, Palestine, San Augustine, las.per,
Haslam, Conroe, Beaumont, and Lufkin.
There was apparently some contllct between Kurth and Davis over where
the mill should he located. In an April 6, 1937, letter to Calder, Newcombe
said the final choice had boiled down to a site near Lufkin advocated by Kurth
anu one ncar Livingston promoted by Davis, a large forest landowner and
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EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
native of the Livingston area. Newcombe wrote that either site was acceptable,
but cautioned Calder that "the present controversy between the two important
factors [Davis and Kurth] requires the most delicate handling at this stage to
maintain both their continued and thorough cooperation ... this is the first time
there has been any evidence of divergent interests between these two."
Hardy's study showed Lufkin to be the best site for several reasons., but
his decision was likely influenced because of its proximity to Kurth's
hometown of Keltys. Knowing of his dominant nature, it is unlikely that Kurth
would have allowed the mill to be built too far from his business base.
The initial plans for the paper mill ea.<.;t of Lufkin called for a facility
capable of producing 45,000 tons of newsprint and 30,000 tons of kraft pulp
per year. The cost was estimated at more than $5 million. When the original
plan did not meet with universa! acceptance, a new plan was filed with the
initial incorporation of Southland Paper Mills, Inc., on May 5, 1937, with the
filing of a charter in Austin.
The corporation's name was taken from the prospects that it would sell
paper to newspapers "all over the Southland." The incorporators were Davis,
Florence, and Newcombe. Following the incorporation, the first meeting of the
shareholders was held May 10, 1937, in Dallas, with the election of sixteen
directors: Davis, brothers Ernest and Joseph H. Kurth, Jr., Doty, Florence,
Adams, R.W. Wortham, Sr., R.W. Wortham, Jr., Newcombe, John R. Alford,
Garvan, Ted Dealey, R.W. Kelley, Temple, 1.M. West, and Dr. Herty. The
board of directors elected Davis president, Kurth vice-president, Adams
treasurer, and R. W. Wortham, Jr. secretary.
While Herty was present in Dallas and was proposed as a shareholder, he
had little if any involvement in the early affairs of Southland after the meeting.
"With the start in Texas," he wrote a friend, "it has been easy to get things
going."
Most of the discussion at the meeting in Dallas dealt with plans for
financing the company and it was clear that agreement would not come early.
Lloyd G. Schenck, who wrote a history of the company in 1943, described the
deliberations over the following months: "It became increasingly apparent that
there could be no harmonious meeting of minds of all interested parties. But
the project was kept alive by Ernest Kurth and his associates," These were
Calder and Newcombe of Perkins-Goodwin Company, and several newspaper
publishers, including Dealey, Stahlman of Nashville, and E,K. Gaylord of
Oklahoma City.
The "closely knit" group Schenck described went on with engineering
and financial plans «despite procrastination of others and a growing lack of
interest of individuals fonnerly prominent in the project. and despite many
interior obstacles that were seemingly insurmountable." It was not until the
opposing interests withdrew from the project that it was possible to concentrate on the details and problems of the mill's engineering and financing.
Because of the "growing lack of interest" by some of the original busi-
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
25
nessmen, Southland wa~ rechartered on June 4, 1938, and the original charter
was dissolved. The new incorporators were Kurth, his brother Joseph, and
Newcombe.
At the first meeting of shareholders, Ernest Kurth was named president,
Arthur Temple, Sr. was chosen vice-president, Newcombe was named
treasurer, and S.W. Henderson, Jr., one of the owners of Angelina County
Lumber Company, was elected secretary. The directors were Kurth and his
brother Joseph, Temple, Newcombe, W.C. Trout of Lufkin, Dealey, Gaylord,
Dallas attorney Alex Weisberg, and Paul T. Sanderson of Texas Long Leaf
Lumber Company, Trinity.
With Southland now a formal corporate entity, Kurth staked everything
he owned, except the Kurth home at Keltys, on the prospect of making an
unfamiliar product out of virtually untried ingredient\) in a place where paper
had never been made.
The cost of building a pulp mill and paper machine had risen to seven
million dollars, a vast sum to raise in the 1930s, even for a man with Ernest
Kurth's substantial fortune. "I beat the bushes. And businessmen ran from me
as if I were a wounded cougar," he told a Collier's Magazine writer in 1951.
"A lot of them said I was a fool ... and would soon be a bankrupt fool."
In 1937, as he began to plan for the paper mill, one of Kurth's first
contacts was Houston Chronicle publisher Jesse Jones, who headed the New
Deal's Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). Kurth felt he could secure
commitments from newspaper publishers and East Texas timbermen for about
$3 million. The RFC wa.', asked for a loan of $3.5 million, slightly less than 50
percent of the capital needs, and in a letter dated November 11, 1937, the
agency conditionally agreed to the amount requested. But by the spring of
1938 it became apparent that Southland's backers could not raise their pledged
commitments. and the RFC was asked to raise its commitment to $4 million,
or 57.1 percent of the project's costs.
In September 1938, Kurth and his associates completed a deal with
Champion Paper & Fiber Company to supply Southland with chemical-made
wood pulp from its mill at Pasadena. By using Champion's pulp, the Kurth
team would avoid having to construct it~ own chemical pulp mill, lowering the
mill's capital needs to $6 million. At the same time, commitments for stock
subscriptions were assured, dearing the way for a practical financing package.
Jesse Jones said the RFC would lend Kurth $3.5 million to add to his own
money, if he could match the sum with Texas collateral. Kurth agreed.
In addition to Jesse Jones, Ernest Kurth needed the support of another
powerful Texan in Washington, Lyndon B. Johnson, to win approval for his
RFC loan. Johnson, one of the strongest proponents of President Roosevelt's
New Deal programs l was on the road to becoming one of the most powerful
men in Washington. Because of Kurth's Republican leanings - his father was
a solid Republican who had once lost a race for lieutenant governor on the
GOP ticket - he was unsure of the reception he would receive from Democrat
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EASTTRXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
Johnson, but at a meeting in Washington, Johnson agreed to help expedite the
RFC loan.
Southland's supporters began in 1938 to put together the components for
building the South's first southern pine newsprint mill. Kurth found his
greatest ally in the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, which for
years had tried to generate capital for a Southern newsprint plant. Led by
Gaylord of the Oklahoma City Times, Dealey of the Dallas Morning Ne'l1's and
Stahlman of the Nashville Banner, the publishers told Kurth: "We'll take all
the newsprint you can produce for the first five years."
Beyond the publishers, Southland garnered support from investors in
Lufkin, Diboll, Nacogdoches, San Augustine, Henderson, and other communities in East Texas. "Their early investment in Southland made millionaires of
many ordinary families," said Pitser Garrison, an attorney for Kurth.
With the RFC loan, Kurth and his associates raised $1.6 million in cash
subscriptions. Angelina County Lumber Company, Southern Pine Lumber
Company, and Texas Long Leaf Lumber Company provided 108,000 acres of
timberland valued at $7.50 per acre, Southland gave the companles 40,500
units of preferred-common stock for the lands. Southern Pine Lumber
Company of Texarkana and Diboll gave the largest block of lands, some
40,000 acres. Other large blocks of timberland were added to Southland's
holdings in the 19405 and 1950s.
A construction contact was signed late in 1938 with Merritt, Chapman &
Scott Corporation Company, which had built three paper mills in the South.
The contract was approved when Southland's board of directors held its first
meeting in Lufkin on January 9, 1939. George F. Hardy was chosen as the
engineer and Tom A. Wark, general manager of Watab Paper Company of
Minnesota and a forty-five-year veteran in the paper industry, was selected as
the mill's general manager.
In 1939, Charles H. Herty's crusade for a Southern newsprint mill was
coming to a end. So was his life. In June, he suffered the first in a series of
heart attacks. He admitted in a letter to a friend, "1 overtaxed myself somewhat
during the past two or three weeks." Just five months before his seventy-first
birthday, on July 17, 1938, Herty died of another heart attack. "He died a
happy man; he knew Lufkin would build his newsprint mill," said his former
assistant, Dr. Charles Carpenter, who later carne to Lufkin to become
Southland's chief chemist. Even though he was no longer there, Herty's
greatest legacy to his beloved South was just beginning. On Janum-y l4~ 1939,
his lifelong dream of a Southern newsprint mill began to materialize as Kurth,
Calder, Southern newspaper publishers, and Herty's colleagues from his
Savannah laboratory, gathered east of Lufkin on a 240-acre site once used as
a corn field and broke ground for Southland Paper Mills, Inc. Kurth turned the
first shovel of dirt.
Construction began on March 14 and the mill was dedicated on May 27,
1939, even though it was only partially finished. During the ceremonies, the
site was named Herty and Kurth unveiled a large plaque bearing the likeness
EAST TEXAS JUSTORICAL ASSOCIATION
27
of Herty and Francis P. Garvan, his Chemical Foundation benefactor. The
inscription read: "The first plant for making commercial newsprint paper from
southern yellow pine. This institution is the fruit of the genius and devotion of
two great Americans, Francis Patrick Garvan and Charles Holmes Herty.ll
In 1939, Texas had only one major paper mill - the Pasadena facility of
Champion Paper and Fiber Company. Consequently, there were few
experienced papermakers available in the state to operate Kurth's emerging
newsprint venture in Lufkin. At the same time, with no newsprint mills in the
South, few Southern papermakers had newsprint production experience. For
the few who did, Kurth's newsprint project was seen as too risky.
Kurth turned to Norman Lewis Beaudry of River Bend, Ontario, a French
Canadian known in the paper industry as an able troubleshooter. "If they had
problems, Daddy went in, straightened them out, and we moved to another
mill," said his daughter, Norma Beaudry Bennett. "That was what he did best,
moving [rom one mill to another." Beaudry remained with Southland as its
first papermaking superintendent until the mill made its first paper and then
returned to Canada with his family.
Many Canadians also came to Lufkin to work for Tom Wark. Surrey
Slater, who managed a major newsprint mill in Canada, brought in additional
Canadian workers. So did Walter McHale, who succeeded Slater. Diek
Witherell, Southland's groundwood superintendent, was a native of Minnesota
and the son of a Northern U.S. papermaker. Witherell arrived in Lufkin in
November 1939, driving a 1936 Chevrolet coupe. "It took twenty-four quarts
of oil to keep that or jenny running between Minnesota and Lufkin," he said.
The Canadians and Northern papermakers who came to Lufkin in the
1930s were largely union members. "When they came here, there wasn't a
union anywhere in Angelina County, and hardly within the state," said retired
personnel manager Robbie Warren. "When they started the mill, the men met
in the Angelina County Courthouse and organized lhemselves in a group and
started having their first union meetings. They also began negotiating with the
company. But there were no bitter feelings between the company and the
unions," said Warren.
Most of the arriving Canadians were French Canadians and spoke
French. They brought to Lufkin new names such as Coty, Besner, Ballenger,
Beaudry, LaBarr, Benoit, and Pelkey. SOffie applied for American citizenship
after Ii ving in Texas for a few years.
In addition to the Canadians, Southland hired many of the laborers who
had helped build the mill while working for Merritt, Chapman & Scott. Most
of these were residents of Angelina County and the surrounding area.
Experienced workers in the paper mill usually were hired for about fifty
cents an hour; inexperienced hands received thirty-five cents. Most workers
dreamed of eventually getting a job working on the paper machine, which had
its own peculiar system of employment. Because the machinery was complicated, six men were required for each of three shifts. They included a
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EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
machine tender, a back tender, and four others - a third hand, a fourth hand, a
fifth hand, and a sixth hand, the lowest position.
James W. Moynihan~ who was seventeen when he began working in the
mill, worked the graveyard shift from midnight to 8 a.m., for thirty-five cents
an hour. "I was working in the technical lab and soon got a chance to work as
a sixth hand on the paper machine."
By the end of December 1939, the paper mill was completed and the
machinery was tested. On Sunday, January 20, the first printable rolls of southern
pine newsprint were produced at the paper mill and deli vered to the Lufkin Daily
News on Monday to see how it would perform on a newspaper press.
While it pleased Lufkin residents, Southland's decision to run its first
commercial rolls on the presses of the Lufkin Daily News irritated E.M. (Ted)
Dealey, the Dallas Morning News executive who had been among Southland's
earlier champions. On January 27 he wrote to Ernest Kurth: "I am not mad, but
I am terribly hurt. For a year the Dallas News was promised the first paper
from the East Texas newsprint mill. IfI have talked to you and Al (Newcombe)
about it once, I have talked to you about it twenty times, and each time I was
given positive assurance that the first newspaper in the country to print on the
product of Southland Paper MiIIs, Inc., would be the Dallas News. And yet
here, the Lufkin paper slips one by us by printing its issue of the 23rd on East
Texas pine." Kurth quickly made amends. He had the mill ship two boxcars
load of paper to the Dallas Morning News pressroom the foIIowing week.
Charles Carpenter said while the Southland newsprint's only virtue in the
beginning was its ability to stay on the press without excessive breaks, the mill
soon began to make improvements in manufacturing a good sheet of newsprint
on a high-volume. commercial basis, but only after converting its woodgrinding stones to a finer grit and solving a pitch (resin) problem.
The pine pitch issue plagued the mill for nearly two years. The pitch
would accumulate on the papermaking equipment after long, continuous runs.
"Day after day, I spent six hours scraping pitch off the press roll," recalled
James Moynihan.
While Herty's laboratory work indicated the pitch would not be a serious
problem, the problems faced in a daily production environment were different,
and Southland's technical crews had to look beyond HeTty's research for
solutions. Papermakers had to use kerosene to wipe the pitch from the paper
machine's innards, and it was such a problem that bucket brigades often
carried away pitch accumulating on the paper machine's granite roll and
scraped off by a "doctor blade" attachment on the granite roll. "But the mill
couldn't survive with this system," said Carpenter.
In kraft pulp mills elsewhere in the South, the pitch wasn't a problem
because the digester~ used to produced the kraft "cooked out" the pitch and
rendered it harmless.
After two years of extensive experimentation, the mill's employees
learned to solve the pitch problem by experimenting with the proper use of
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
29
alum and caustic soda. Fred Bishop, a Southland chemist, said the control of
these conditions with the addition of alum took "a tremendous amount of fine
tuning," particularly because the Southland paper machine was running at
speeds fa~ter than other machines in the industry.
As the years passed, Southland's papermakers grew more proficient in
making paper from southern pine, but the Canadian industry was still berating
the Lufkin mill as a upstart. Some Canadians, however, were warning that the
Lufkin mill should not be ignored. In a paper presented to an industry meeting
on October 22, 1948, in Atlanta, Georgia, McHale credited Southland's work
force with solving the mill '8 early problems: "The original idea of a newsprint
mill was concei ved by a few industrial leaders, but the ultimate execution of
the project was made possible by the combined efforts of many hands, many
hearts, and many minds."
Pitser Garrison remembers that the paper mill started an economic
turnaround in East Texas. "All over the area, there was a tremendous amount
of pulpwood timber, but we lacked the manufacturing facilities to utilize [it],"
recalled Garrison. "The startup of the mill in Luflcin not only provided a
market for the pulpwood, but created hundreds of new jobs, both in the mill
and in the woods, during a time when they were critically needed."
Despite the early problems in the 1940s, Southland's employees were
enthusiastic about their jobs, took pride in what they were doing, and worked
as a team. Carpenter recalled an example: "One night around three in the
morning, we had a breakdown and 1 was out with the maintenance crew to get
the repairs made. Frank Rivenbark, one of the pipefitters, turned to me and
said, 'Doc, we're all in this together and we gotta make it go.'"
Built during World War II, Southland Paper Mills, Inc. faced a series of
unique challenges in its efforts to continue operations at the Lufkin mill. As
early as 1941, Ernest Kurth was convinced the mil1 needed its own chemical
(kraft) pulping facilities to lower the mill's costs. After only one year,
Southland's five-year contract to purchase chemical pulp from Champion
Paper & Fiber Company's Pasadena, Texas, paper mill had proven
unsatisfactory, Kurth approached the War Protection Board for permission to
build its own chemical pulp mill since industrial projects were being
monitored by the government. But on December 16, 1942, the WPB rejected
Southland's proposal, as well as a second newsprint machine, because they
were not essential to the war effort.
Kurth suspected that his competitors in the newsprint industry were
behind the rejection and sought help from several influential politicians in
Washington, including Lyndon B. Johnson, who intervened on Southland's
behalf with the WPB. Southland was able to add a chemical pulp mill and
bleach plant in J 944 at a cost of $3 million.
When Southland incurred labor shortages among its pulpwood crews,
Kurth began inquiring about using POW labor from internment camps in East
Texas. He wrote Colonel J.R. Carvolth, commander of a POW camp in Walker
County, and his request for laborers was approved. Southland and Southern
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EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
Pine Lumber Company leased a Civilian Conservation Corps camp from the
United States Forest Service located four miles north of Lufkin on U.S.
Highway 69. The Camp Lufkin POWs began cutting pulpwood early in 1944.
"They sent us Italians at first," said woodyard superintendent Eldridge
Ryman. "It was impossible to work them; they wouldn't work, and wouldn't
do anything but pout. So we sent them back and they sent us Germans. They
were satisfactory. You didn't work them; they worked themselves," he said.
The Gennan prisoners in Lufkin far exceeded the expectations of the
people at Southland. They were also used to unload boxcars at the paper mlll
and worked in the woodyard.
Kurth never forgot Lyndon B, Johnson for his help in Washington during
the war years. Johnson repeatedly came through with war-time certificates for
Southland when they were needed. Whenever Johnson ran for reelection,
Kurth always reminded his Texas business associates and Lufkin businessmen: "Look, you fellahs need to vote for this man; he saved our neck."
In the 19405, as Kurth was battling the cancer that would eventually take
his voice and then his life, he was working on Southland's expansion. In 1943
he asked engineer George F. Hardy to estimate the costs of a second newsprint
machine, but the project was delayed during the war years. The project which consisted of a machine capable of making 210 tons of paper a day - was
scheduled for completion in 1947. but strikes in the steel industry, as well as
allied industries, caused delays in materials and equipment, pushing the
completion date to 1948. The No.2 newsprint machine began making paper
on March 29, 1948. Its production of 190 tons a day doubled the mill's capacity and was instrumental in record production, earnings, and income for Southland in 1948. In March 1953, Southland produced its one mlllionth ton of
newsprint.
Having overcome its struggles to become one-of-a-kind industry in Texas
and the South, Southland was now an integral part of Lufkin and East Texas.
Luflcinites were so entrenched in the mill's success that they simply called it
"the paper mill," a nickname that stuck with the mill for the rest of its life,
regardless of who owned it.
In 1948, Kurth reported sales totaling $13,527,273, compared with
$1,461,635 in 1940. The company's net income totaled $2,893,452, compared
with a loss of $33,861 in 1940. Southland was on its way to becoming one of
America's most successful paper companies.
The company completed a third newsprint machine in 1956 with an
output of about 235 tons of newsprint a day and up to 270 tons a day of
specialty papers. The machine further established Southland as a serious
competitor to Canadian newspri nt interests.
Almost immediately after the No.3 paper machine was completed,
Southland began work on a fourth paper machine at Lufkin to meet increased
newsprint demands. The No.4 project brought to the forefront another Kurth
at Southland. Melvin E. Kurth, Jr., the only son of Ernest Kurth's attorney
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
31
brother in Houston, had worked a few months at Southland in the summer of
1950 to develop his engineering skills. When he finished his coHege
education, he landed a job with Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam, a Houston
engineering company. Kurth spent his time in Lufkin creating engineering
drawings for the new No. 4 paper machine. Located in a Brown & Root
Construction Company shack, he had little contact with his uncle or other
Southland executives.
Completed in 1958, No.4 was capable of producing nearly 340 tons of
newsprint a day and was one of the world's most modem newsprint machines.
Southland's success at Lufkin soon precipitated widespread growth in the
South's newsprint industry. In the 1950s, other newsprint mills blossomed.
Among them were Coosa River Newsprint in 1950; Bowater Paper Corpora~
tion, which established mills in Tennessee in 1955 and South Carolina in 1959;
International Paper Company, which installed a newsprint unit in 1956 at its
Mobile, Alabama, plant and built a new newsprint mill at Pine Bluff, Arkansas,
in 1958; and Cox Newsprint, which opened a new mill in Augusta, Georgia, in
1966. "Thus did the Lufkin mill's pioneering work pave the way for a burgeoning of newsprint production," wrote Jack P. Ogden of the Forest History
Society, Inc., in 1990.
In 1967, Southland added a second newsprint mill at Sheldon, near
Houston, and became America's second largest newsprint manufacturer.
In 2002, as the South's pioneer paper mill celebrated the sixty-second
anniversary of its &tartup, it remained firmly entrenched as an example of the
entrepreneurship spirit that has made American industry a model for the world.
The heroes in Southland's remarkable success story are numerous.
·Dr. Charles Holmes Hetty spent most of his life trying to convince
government and industry officials that qual1ty newsprint could be made from
the southern pines abundantly growing from Georgia to Texas.
·Emest Lynn Kurth, the hard-driving lumberman from Keltys, Texas, also
dreamed of building a paper mill, but it wasn't until he met Herty in 1936 that
he became enamored of newsprint as a product arising from the young pine
forests of his homeland.
·Francis Patrick Garvan, whose family-operated Chemical Foundation
made it a mission to free America from its dependence on foreign chemical
makers and seized upon Herty's Southern paper mill idea as the means to
broaden his campaign for American industrial independence.
•Louis Calder, the New Yorker who rose Horatio Alger-like from the
office boy of a paper sales company to its president and principal owner, was
convinced that a Southern newsprint mill would broaden the South's paper
industry and enhance its economy.
·Newspaper publishers George Bannennan Dealey and his son E.M.
(Ted) Dealey of Dallas and Edward King Gaylord of Oklahoma City, who
pioneered the newspaper industries in their states. wanted to loosen the stran-
32
EAST TEXAS HISTORlCAL ASSOCIATION
glehold foreign newspaper manufacturers held on the newspaper business in
the South and Southwest. Their meetings with Herty, Kurth, Garvan and
Calder led to Southland's initial incorporation.
-Like most people, Arthur Temple. Sr., who had inherited his father's
lumbering empire in Texas, did not have much cash in the Depression, but he
gave 40,000 acres of his family's timberlands - more than any other
timbennanlinvestor - and became a founding director and officer. When his
son, Arthur, Jr., decided to leave Southland in 1961, the family could have sold
its stock to outside interests. Instead, the stock was sold to Southland,
protecting the company's independence for another sixteen years.
-The men and women who came to work for Southland in Lufkin in the
1930s were simply looking for decent jobs during the Depression. but they
became heroes as much as Southland's creators by overcoming the enonnity
of making Southland's one-of-a-kind paper mill succeed when the experts said
it would not work.
What made Southland succeed?
Melvin E. Kurth, Jr., Southland's third and last president from 1973 to
1977, believes it was a matter of pride on the part of Southland's founders and
the men and women who constituted the Lufkin work force.
"For the most part, the people who worked at Lufkin were hard-working,
honest and dedicated people who had a feeling that they had become part of
something different in America," said Kurth. ''They wanted the Lufkin mill to
succeed~ they wouldn't accept failure."
Southland's founders were men who were willing to risk their fortunes on
an unproved industrial process. "The risks were enormous," said Kurth. "The
New York banks, who controlled America at that time, were reluctant to
provide any financing, and the people who ran the major paper companies
were skeptical that newsprint could be made from trees that had excessive
amounts of pitch and resin,"
Charles Carpenter, the mill's first chemist and fonner ally of Dr. Herty,
had a similar observation in 1989 when he was interviewed by historian
Bobby Johnson. Carpenter said that Dr. Herty's work was done in Georgia,
and the scientist had talked to Georgia state officials about a newsprint mill
there. "But it took something the Georgians didn't have...there was something
in Texas that was catching. I can't see the mill being established in any place
except Texas."
Sources
Books
Bowman, Bob. First ofa Kind: Building the South s First Newsprint Mill
(Lufkin, 2001).
Johnson, Walter C., and Arthur T. Robb. The South and its Newspapers.
1903-1953 (Ch.attanooga, 1954).
EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
33
Kilgore, Linda Elaine. "Paper Making in Texas." In The Handbook of
Texas (Austin, 1963).
Lufkin Genealogical and Historical Society. History of Angelina County
(Lutkin, 1992).
Max.well, Robert, and Robert Baker. Sawdust Empire: The Texas Lumber
1830-1940 (College Station, 1983).
Industf)~
Reed, Germaine M. Crnsadinfj for Chemistry: The Professional Career
of Charles Holmes Herty (Athens, Georgia, 1995).
Interviews
Interviews with 30 retired employees of Southland Paper Mills, Inc., by
Dr. Bobby H. Johnson, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches,
Texas. Funded by the Pineywoods Foundation, 1989.
Kurth, Melvin E. Jr., interview by the author, Lufkin, 2001.
Magazine and Newspaper Articles
Champion International Corporation. "Southern Newsprint Pioneer: The
Lufkin Mill." Stamford, Connecticut, 1990.
Ogden, Jack P. "Charles Holmes Herty and the Birth of the Southern
Newsprint Industry, 1927-1940." Journal of Forest History 21 (April 1977).
St. Regis Paper Company. "Lutkin & Newsprint: A 40-Year Partnership."
Lufkin, 1980.
Collections
Abitibi-Consolidated, various documents and correspondence related to
Southland Paper Mills, Inc., Lufkin. Texas.
Southland Paper Mills. Inc. records. 1937 to 1977, Steen Library, Stephen
F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas.
Texas Forestry Museum, annual reports, documents and correspondence
related to Southland Paper Mills, Inc., 1937 to 1977, Lufkin, Texas.
Other
Schenck, Lloyd G. "The Development of Southland Paper Mills, Inc."
Unpublished ms, Lufkin, 1939.
When Paper Came To East Texas, symposium sponsored by the East
Texas Historical Association and the Pineywoods Foundation, November 7,
1998, Lufkin, Texas.